On Suspended Exhibitions, New Websites and Questions
Today’s post is a combo-grande and I’ll only be around at noon to quickly moderate, then a couple of hours later.
First, my mailbox was a-flooded late yesterday (and there was also a comment by tierraist–thanks!) regarding the, um, "art" exhibit entitled "Don’t Trust Me" at the Walter and McBean Galleries in San Francisco. Here’s the deal:
As a result of the overwhelming response from In Defense of Animals members [AND Animal Person Readers!], SFAI announced this morning that they have suspended the exhibit at the Walter and McBean Galleries, at least temporarily. The Institute will hold a public forum on Monday, March 31st at SFAI’s campus to hear criticism of the work. Controversial "artist" Adel Abdessemed will not be present, but the school’s Dean of Academic Affairs, two art professors, and the exhibit’s curator will be. Thank you to everyone who helped make this happen by urging SFAI to remove the installation, and forwarding our alert to people around the country.
IDA founder and president Dr. Elliot Katz commended SFAI for discontinuing the exhibit, and for holding the public forum. "The Institute’s initial defense that the animals were going to be killed anyway sends a terrible message, not only to the public, but to the next generation of artists," he noted. "Their official response was at first rather inflexible and defensive. I am pleased that now they are at least willing to hear the public’s concerns relating to the ethical and moral ramifications of this exploitive and cruel exhibit."
– If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, please attend the public forum and respectfully express your opinion on this exhibit in person. This is a great opportunity to let people know that it is wrong to hurt or kill animals for "art," and to expand the argument: If they found the images of death disturbing, they should realize that all animals killed for meat suffer terribly, and that going vegan is an ethical choice that saves lives.
What: Public forum to discuss art and ethics, and whether killing animals can ever be considered "art."
When: Monday, March 31st at noon
Where: San Francisco Art Institute Main Campus (in the lecture hall), 800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco
– If you cannot attend the public forum, please Take Action to reaffirm your desire to see this exhibit closed down once and for all, and to urge SFAI to implement a policy explicitly prohibiting exhibits for which animals were intentionally exploited or killed.
The phone number of the gallery is 415-749-4563 and their e-mail is exhibitions@sfai.edu.
Next, Roger alerted me about a new website, www.vegatopia.org, which, according to its creators . . .
. . . is dedicated to providing a comprehensive academic resource on all things vegan. If you are a student, researcher or teacher interested in any aspect of veganism this is the site for you. We aim to provide you with access to as wide a range of academic resources on veganism as possible and hope that through the inter- and multi- disciplinary sharing of ideas, this site will facilitate new areas of research into vegan-related issues. We want Vegatopia to be an interactive forum for dialogue, informing individual and collaborative research and teaching, as well as making a contribution to vegan activism and having a positive impact on veganism in a wider sense.
Sounds like something I’ve been waiting for!
When you look through you’ll notice it is not an abolitionist site (it mentions Gary Francione and Erik Marcus under "Academic and Research," but don’t let that stop you from giving it serious consideration.
Finally, I received an e-mail yesterday and if the question hadn’t been asked within a polite, well-meaning note, I probably wouldn’t have taken it seriously and thought it was from someone (you know the type) whose intention was to annoy me and waste my time.
With that said, I don’t have a bunch of spare time today. As I said, I will be able to moderate at noon for 10 minutes, but other than that, I’m unavailable.
Here’s the question, and I’d like you to respond to it in a respectful way, as if your mother were asking it:
I see the human species as one with nature, not separate and subject to different rules. All animals kill other organisms to eat whether they be animal, plant, fungi, protist, or otherwise.
What is the vegan argument for not killing other animals to eat considering that nonhuman animals kill other animals to eat?
I’d go in the direction of because we don’t have to, but that’s me and when I’m in a hurry my snide comes out. Any productive, kind explanations are welcome.
"nonhuman animals kill other animals to eat?"
To accept the premise of this question is to accept that it is okay for us to kill other humans for food, and yet we do not permit such a thing.
When humans kill nonhumans, they do so systematically for convenient food, fashion, recreation, and to satisfy their curiosity. These are not predatory motivations. Predators generally kill and consume only that which is necessary for their survival. On the other hand, humans conduct wholesale slaughter of vast proportions, on land and in the oceans, destroying the balance of nature. No other species behaves comparably.
And not all other animals are predators. Many consume a vegan diet (no nonhuman animal drinks the milk of another species, for example), including some of our closest primate relatives. As for them, it is not necessary for us to kill and consume other animals in order to grow strong and healthy. We have the choice not to kill other animals, and studies shows that we are, in fact, healthier on a plant-based diet than a meat-centered diet.
Ultimately, we do not look to other animals for behavioral standards in other areas, so why should we look to them for moral inspiration and guidance? Many nonhuman animals do things we would consider unacceptable if we did them to one another. Why single out killing other animals for food? Let's run around naked and mark our scent with urine on various landmarks in the neighborhoods in which we live, too.
The responsibilities and rights of each individual correspond to their capacities. For instance, mentally disabled humans, human infants, and nonhuman animals are not capable of understanding the meaning of duties and responsibilities, but they can suffer harm and obviously they have an interest in avoiding this (including the harm that comes from being deprived of life). All beings with interests such as these should have rights to protect them, and all those who can reflect on their actions have responsibilities to behave accordingly.
What this basically means is that, because we can think in moral terms, we have duties. Because we are aware that animals are sentient, and that we do not need to exploit and kill them for food, we have fallen into the duty not to harm them, if for no other reason than our widely-held recognition of the principle of equal consideration. In other words, we have the capacity to understand that animals experience harm when we exploit them and, knowing that harm is bad, this imposes a duty on us not to cause that harm, or not to exploit animals.
Humans are unique. Not in as many ways as lots of people think, but in some ways. Humans are the only animal that can be reasonably expected to act consistently in a moral way. Other animals can display commendable moral fiber beyond what many humans have, at times, but they can also often be selfish and cruel because they are amoral (not immoral). If we wanted to tell them to stop doing something, they wouldn't understand it. Humans have the greatest capacity for compassion in the animal kingdom and can be expected to exercise it unless they have a disability that prevents this. Other animals can demonstrate compassion, but if they don't in some instance we can't blame them; usually it is because their perceptions of the situation just don't allow it. Predators wouldn't last long if they always felt sorry for their prey. Omnivores in the wild can't generally afford to be picky either. Humans as a group face no such pressure and can be expected to be capable of sympathy towards other beings even if they are unlike themselves.
Nature can be cruel and unfair. Should we design our society to be equally cruel and unfair? Most animals eat whatever they find both available and edible. That includes most humans. But any human who is reasonably well off has a vast choice of food items. So the way I see it, veganism is asking humans to be slightly more discerning in their food choices than other animals who are less gifted in their understandings of abstract concepts.
Humans are different from other animals; we have electricity and computers and grammar. You can debate whether we have ultimately benefited from these things, but I don't think that if dogs had computers they would have somehow used them with more wisdom than we do. Human society gives you access to hospitals and other benefits that lions and tigers don't have, so I'm not convinced that we should go "back to nature" only at times when it happens to justify something we want to do but can't otherwise justify, like cruelty.
Humans also kill each other, sometimes by the millions, but we don’t move from that fact to justify killing each other for no good reason. So, when the smoke clears from this question, it’s not “why shouldn’t we act like all the other predators in nature?” Rather, the question is “why should we include sentient nonhumans in the moral community?” For an answer to that, see the following essay on the topic:
http://unpopularveganessays.blogspot.com/search/label/sentience
Of course, ought implies can, so there is an underlying assumption that vegan living is reasonably possible. The fact is that vegan living is not only reasonably possible, it’s very good for our health and environment, also. It’s not only possible, but we should also be vegan for our own good.
A site like Vegatopia is something I've been thinking about myself. Although, I was more thinking of a wiki for veganism, which is easy to navigate and where every user can contribute. Wikipedia is unrivaled for quick information search but has been known to remove some topics which would be of interest for us, "Carnism" for example. Vegatopia seems like a difficult site to search for information and may not be very useful for layman research.
A vegipedia, however, could serve as the one place to go when you need some quick facts, whether it is hunting statistics, vegetarian celebrities or nutrition.